Unfortunately, that physical universe does indeed permit particles to spin in both directions at once, or at least to behave exactly as if they are doing so.

“Schrödinger and Einstein were brilliant mathematicians. And at least in this case, entirely lacking in common sense. Mathematicians ideate, physicists “worth their ‘salt’” conduct real world tests that strive to confirm whether ‘the idea’* has any actual validity. *the mathematical hypothesis/theory”

–Geoffrey Britain

Einstein _hated_ quantum mechanics for many of the reasons you reject it. Unfortunately, _every single experimental test_ that has been peformed in the years since affirms QM. Over and over and over, over a period of decades.

Rememer, ‘common sense’ once said that ‘a second is a second is a second’, and of course it was impossible for someone travelling at .99c to experience a year while seven years or so passed on Earth…except that that’s exactly what actually does happen. And both the 1 year and 7 year perceptions are equally real.

QM is crazy. It violates our intuitions about what is real and what is not. It seems, in everyday terms, _impossible_. But it _works_. It’s the basis of most of our advanced electronics and communications technology. It’s part of why atom bombs detonate, and just ask the people of Hiroshima if that is real.

The universe just doesn’t operate the way our brains are wired to want it to.

“If a tree falls in the forest it makes a sound, whether or not you’re there to hear it.” — IrishOtter49

No, it doesn’t. It makes the atoms of the air and ground vibrate, yes, but _sound_ is a perception the brain produces in reaction to the ear being impacted by those vibrations. Some people with brain disorders perceive vibrations in the ear as other things than sound.

It’s like color. The light impinging on our eyes is different physical frequencies, yes, but _color_ is a perception of those frequencies in the brain. For people with red/green color blindness, those two frequency bands are the same color. For people with total color blindess (rare), color just doesn’t exist. The frequency differences are real, and a color-blind person can measure them with instruments or calculate their nature, but for him or her, color is not a thing. For some people, indigo is real, for others, it’s just purple or blue. The frequency differences are real, the colors are perceptual and conditional.

Which isn’t just nit-picking. We experience the world through our senses and it’s easy to assume that what we perceive is ‘the’ reality, which is only conditionally true. Often it makes no practical difference, but sometimes it matters a lot.

As Wikipedia puts it:
According to Schrödinger, the Copenhagen interpretation implies that the cat remains both alive and dead until the state has been observed. Schrödinger did not wish to promote the idea of dead-and-live cats as a serious possibility; on the contrary, he intended the example to illustrate the absurdity of the existing view of quantum mechanics, and thus he was employing reductio ad absurdum.

I have a theory about this. My theory is that this man’s wife is very, very, good in bed!

Beep, beep.